



































Class -PS 55Ab 

Bonk .X5 7-\^>R5 
GofpghtN°. 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 













RHYMES 
























* • • 


9 































TS 3 5-^-5' 
S SI /3^S 

/? 2 . 2 


Copyright, 1923, by 
Donald Cary Williams 


DEC -5 1923 


©C1A70B206 







































Presumptuously 

{and all reverence is presumption ) 
to the kindest 
and most conscientious 
of objectors 






PREFACE 


Then spak a stallwart courtieoure, Sir Hu- 
dibras the Hum-drum, un-to the Kynge sayenge 
Beholde, my Lord, howe greeuously thow has 
splitted thyn inhnytyve. But the Kynge made 
ansuere Sirra, if it lyketh thee not then const 
thow lumpe it. And on that same day Sir 
Hudibras perysshed by the Kynges rede. 

—Kynge Cnut XXIV :14. 



|HEN an otherwise reputable person 
falls a victim to the justifiably dis¬ 
couraged but incorrigible passion for 
torturing into some sort of verbal 
shape those inmost psychoses which a de¬ 
cent respect for the opinion of mankind 
should impel him to conceal—and not only 
that—but publishes them where even he 
who runs a delicatessen store may read, he 
is doomed to suffer the mingled misgivings 
of a fond father who flings his children to 
the wolves from sheer pride of authorship— 
and for the sake of that anomalous apprec¬ 
iation which even a wolf can offer. 

This small book, however—thus-far gentle 
reader—is not, in the strict sense of the 
word, being ‘published’. A few copies are 
being ‘printed’, primarily for my own dark 
satisfaction ; and—a poor second—for the 
doubtful benefit of a handful of choice spir¬ 
its either so charitable by nature, or so 
hardened to immunity by a certain amount 
of unavoidable association with the author, 
that with one eye on the admonitory ex- 




9 











tract at the head of this ‘preface’, and with 
their fingers crossed, they can at least re¬ 
frain from what I would prefer to regard as 
the shallowness of a criticism of what they 
are incapable of comprehending. 

One peculiarity the earlier of the follow¬ 
ing verses exhibit for which some apology 
would perhaps not be out of order. That 
peculiarity consists in the alternate and 
seemingly indiscriminate use of the two 
forms of the second person singular pronoun 
—thou and you—both forms sometimes oc¬ 
curring within a few lines of one another. 
A moment’s thought, however, will at once 
banish whatever reasonless prejudice may 
exist against this seeming inconsistency. 

In no other case, certainly, does the use 
by an author of one word for an object de¬ 
bar him from use, on the same page, of 
another word for that same object. And 
within a single sentence the nice connota¬ 
tions intended may so change as to render 
the substitution of the strange reverential 
intimacy of the "thou” for the engaging 
commonplaceness of "you” an unanalyzable 
aid to the depicting of the ephemeral deli¬ 
cacies that are at the subtle heart of a sin¬ 
gle simplest emotion. 

As a matter of fact, the majority of the 
verses contributing to the case in point may 
be reduced to pronominal uniformity, as it 
were, without interfering with rhyme or 
rhythm, and if any of my few but highly 
intelligent readers care to go to the trouble, 
they are at perfect liberty to make adjust¬ 
ments to suit themselves. 


10 






CALDARAZON 






CALDARAZON 

ALDARAZON swims in a great emp¬ 
tiness on the thither side of space, 
so that when one stands by night 
- — on the black quartz shore he sees no 
sky glamorous with lance-pricks of stars. 
But a little foggy smudge of light—like 
lamplight on a wisp of smoke—glimmers 
above the frozen shoulders of the sea-creep¬ 
ing hills of Dorn. That is the Universe. 

If dwellers on Caldarazon could see the 
Earth, men say, they would see it acrawl 
with the lizard-things of fifteen millions of 
years ago, for so long a time does it take 
light itself to climb across the abyss. Yet 
every night a thousand millions of men’s 
souls leap that immensity, and return again. 

Caldarazon is the land of Dream, and 
thither go men’s spirits on the strange er¬ 
rands of sleep. Sometimes willingly, some¬ 
times unwilling and shrieking, men’s souls 
wander Caldarazon while their still bodies 
breathe slowly, fifteen million light-years 
away. 

Every man knows Caldarazon, the beauty 
and the horror of her—the cold precipice 
above the sea whence one may fall and fall, 
interminably—the eerie forests where name¬ 
less, shapeless beasts await to creep and 
leap, the ice-steep hills of Dorn where dizzy 
climbers strive to scream with soundless 
throats—the dark without reason and the 
light that comes no-whence. 

I too know Caldarazon, but not as you. 


13 







I was born among the gray rushes where 
the Seurth Brook seeps seaward thru the 
stones of Ythra-Bel’s ruined palace. I am 
the last of my people. Daylong I sleep, 
and as you dream of Caldarazon I dream 
myself on earth. 

Thus am I different from other men, and 
forever strange to the ways of their world. 

Some day I shall wake, and lie upon the 
smooth black quartz and watch the smooth 
black sea, while the sourceless daylight of 
Caldarazon fans fiercer ' over Dorn. And I 
shall be very courteous to far-faring souls 
who befall that way. 



14 











I. 


HERE BEGINS THE 
FIRST PART 
OF THESE RHYMES 


ot( V^irto f 





Rhymes (i) 



THE DAWN-SONG OF THE 4-6-2 



ERE, ere the far dawn brighten, now, 
ere the death of dark, 

Look! and the steel ways whiten, silver 
and cold. And hark! 


Now in the valleys hollow, high on the hills 
along, 

Thunders attend and follow her and her 
worship song. 

A black and a brutish vision, a leaping lance of 

tight, . . 

Upon her Masters mission, she hymns to Man 
tonight! 


Wan wraiths of wan religion, pale gods of 
mist of mind. 

They’ve flown their fleetest pigeon, the birds 
I leave behind. 

(The platforms clang behind me, and steam 
grinds steel to steel. 

The whooping shadows blind me, the tangled 
switches reel!) 

And finer, fleeter, faster, who swoop from 
sea to sea, 

I hymn to Man, my Master, to Man who 
madeth me I 


17 










(The groaning gradient eases, the coaches 
lunge and lift . . . 

O birds upon the breezes, what know ye half 
so swift 1) 

No doubtful path he gave me. In blackness 
blind I roar. 

But stayed to guide and save me, the metals 
fade before. 

And firm on straining lever and keen on rip¬ 
pling ties. 

The Man, my master ever, my Maker's hand 
and eyes. 

A breath of acrid burning, a wisp of vapor 
wreath— 

Three thousand horse are spurning the rails 
that scream beneath. 

The leaping pilot lurches, a mist of spume 
and spark. 

The questing headlight searches, a fissure 
down the dark. 

The moaning metal screaming, the fright¬ 
ened shadows flee; 

The muffled miles astreaming are things 
that used to be! 

And I the reeking wonder of flaming flange 
and wheel. 

The red and roaring thunder, of mist and 
fire and steel. 


18 







A panting, sentient being, a blaze with 
brains and breath, 

I owe to Man my freeing from darkness 
worse than death. 

A stone I was, and hidden, a metal, shape¬ 
less, dead. 

Who now have raced and ridden the wings 
of the morning red. 

Three thousand miles before me, a thousand 
lives behind, 

I sing the Brain that bore me, the Master 
and the Mind; 

And now the dawn is glowing, and nozv the 
stars are dim, 

The gray-lit miles aflowing, I race the sun 
for Him. 



19 










HAWKER 


(With poignant artistic regret the author 
must here admit that the intrepid transatlantic 
flyer whose heroic death is celebrated in the 
following was eventually rescued in an — 
esthetically speaking—disappointing state of un¬ 
impaired vitality.) 



HE gray land dipped behind him. 
The ocean gleamed before. 

The wind rose up to bind him. 
And the angry ocean floor 
Sent sudden mists to blind him 
And hidden waves to roar. 


A footless, eyeless swallow 

He skimmed the cloudy aisles. 
The sightless, soundless hollow 
Where the sunlight never smiles, 
But clammy cloud-things follow 
For twice a thousand miles. 


He gave the waves below him 
His moulted landing gear 
That never an isle might know him 
Of all the waters drear 
Till Ireland’s sunrise show him 
Her emerald coasts were near. 

We know not when nor whither 
The darkness whelmed his prow. 
We know that God was thither 
Ere Hawker passed, and now 
We know no wave can wither 
The bays upon his brow. 


20 









But once I dreamed a vision 
Of a greater gull that flew 
Adown the dim derision 

Of the sunlight and the dew. 

He eyed a vaster mission— 

And the fog bank let him thru. 

Perhaps, beyond the Portal 

And the cloudy curtains drawn. 
Thru a cloudless sky, immortal, 

O’er a lonely, level lawn. 

His singing engines hurtle 

And his wings beat up the dawn. 


Requiem 

When the last great trumpet sounds, O Lord, 

And the hosts of the dead arise, 

And the Angel stands with the flaming 
sword, 

Thy Guide to Paradise, 

And the timid folk to his garment cling 

To tread the heaven ways 
Where the great stars sweep and the comets 
swing 

And the drifting darkness sways— 

Oh, give him his planes—his planes,—dear 
God— 

His motors pounding free, 

And the trackless spaces where Thou hast 
trod. 

And he will come to Thee. 


21 





SPRING 

(Occidental College, March 1919) 

WELLING circlet of emerald hills 

Cupping the heavens to north and 
south. 

Earth’s sweet lips that the sunlight 
thrills. 

Kissing the spring on her dew-wet mouth. 

Color that hurts us, a glory of green. 

Splotched with poppies and purple plume; 
Sun-soaked hollows slashed between, 

Blazing, a riot of burnished bloom; 

Breezes asplatter with yellow surf 

Drive it in spindrift down the grass, 
Bubbles of foam on the scented turf. 
Shimmering splashes of molten brass 1 

Perfumed tang of the wizened bush, 

Writhing and gray from the cactus beds. 
Mingles with scent of the flowers that push 
Out of the grasses their cool young heads. 

The blue warm veil of the skyline droops. 

Earth’s blind face to the southward seeks, 
Lips half-parted; the sunlight stoops, 

Kisses the spring on her dew-wet cheeks. 



22 








V i W. ' **\£ J< -V- 4). 4’- - H» J ' 




THE DARK DISTANCE 

0 | UNLIGHT, and the shadows in thy 
hair— 

Yea, thine earth is fair: 

- Gold and rose and green. 

And the vast warm arch aloft. 

Blue sky, thy sky—a soft 
And a merciful screen. 

But what of the night, O Maid ? 
Eternal and infinite shade. 

Dread depths and trembling star 
Where the hush’d black spaces are. 
Shaken, and dazed, afraid— 

Ah, God! I see so far! 


SAGESSE OBLIGE 



0 them of deeper vision. 

Who know the dark is Night, 
To them, their songs, the mission 
To keep the Lie alight. 


They know its hopes are hollow. 
They know our loves are dust. 
But blind, we smile and follow. 
They pity, keep the trust. 


23 








LAMA SABACHTHANI 



CRY from the dark; you hear it. 

A pain that you always knew. 

But never your hand comes near it. 
Never a voice from you. 


You gave us the earth and sorrow. 

You left us here to die: 

Blood now, and hell tomorrow, 

The Cross, and a snivelled Lie; 


Dead space and chance-born maggots 
That twist and writhe and crawl. 

Heaping your hell-fire fagots. 

Binding your church’s pall. 

A cry from the dark; your peoples 
Call for your aid tonight. 

Their crazy, cross-crowned steeples 
Grope for the promised light. 

And lol and our God is mightless, 
And the Crown on his perjured 
head! 

Never the sky so lightless. 

Never the hope so dead. 

We calb and he cannot listen. 

The God that ye gave is gone. 

Only, the planets glisten. 

Only, the earth rolls on. 


24 








\ *V > c .--g-' '*-&f*v*l 


ONE OF THE THREE HUNDRED 
of Long Beach Polytechnic High School 

In the Argonne 


HE death of the day that tinges 
The cliffs and the clouds and 
thee. 

My land where the sunset singes 
To mauve on the marge of the sea. 
With the gold of the gloaming fringes 
The folds of the Flag for me. 


Q 


O land of the spring! O my land. 
Where I and the Spring were born I 
The breath of the brush on the highland. 
The scent of the sage and the thorn. 
The dusk of the dreaming Island, 

Adrift on the mist at morn 1 


To thee here our Sacrifice rather. 

To thee, and their Standard furls: 
The green where the breakers lather 
The coast where the comber curls. 
The gold where the glad winds gather 
The laughter of gladder girls. 

Here, where the vanguard dozes. 

Ere dawn and the death and the cold. 
We slept, and the Crimson closes, 

The Argent and Azure fold 
In dreams of the Realm of the Roses, 

In gleams of the Green and the Gold. 


25 









THE LAST REVIEW 
Occidental Student Army Training Corps 
December 10, 1918 


El 


YES to the front and heads proud-high, 
Silent and sullen our ranks rolled by, 
Olive and drab from the sunset sky. 
We, that they summoned to battle 
and die 

Where the gray clouds smother and the 
lightnings fly 

And America sweeps to the Rhine! 

"Squads left!”—and the clockwork columns 
clung. 

Tangled and swayed till the last file swung, 

Wavered and wobbled and tightened and 
flung 

A locked and levelled line. 


We that they taught of the battle shout. 

The laden hush of the cramped redoubt. 

The breathless pause ere the trench spew out 
Its mud-smeared burden to swell the rout 
And the steel-pronged barriers yield— 
Our dreams of the rifle and bristling blade. 
Our dreams of barrage and the barricade, 
Our dreams of a manhood unafraid, 

The gleams of our glory glimmer and fade 
To the sane, safe march of a preened parade 
Of boys, on a football field. 

"Victory”—yea, and heads held high. 

Silent and sullen our ranks rolled by, 

Olive and drab from the sunset sky; 


26 







..*b ' ** $ * *.-■ H» Jt . |Q~ 


We that they summoned to battle and die 

Where the red clouds hover and the shrap¬ 
nel fly. 

Men in a world of men. 

Tomorrow we’re laying our rifles away. 

We that they summoned to struggle and 
slay 

Where the wild world quivers and the 
heavens sway 

And the red-rimmed thunders stoop for prey. 

We are marching our last in the ranks 
today 

Tomorrow we’re boys again. 


EVENING ON STANISLAUS 

IS it dusk that has come so slowly? 

Is it night whose standards sweep 
Over the west hills, lowly, 

- Night, and the dark, and sleep? 

Dusk; and the breath of the breezes 
Faints on the pulseless air. 

Hush—while the tired earth eases 
The coils of her dusty hair. 

The worn and the warm world waiting 
The cool of the night to come. 

Her bare brown breast pulsating. 

Her great hot lips are dumb. 


27 








[t ggB& gg ^afflgygusgljfi^ 


“BOB” LAFOLLETTE—1917 



HAT talk ye of traitors and treason? 
Banners that once I bore 
Mean what they meant before. 

Can “raving" that once was reason 
Turn at the touch of War? 


My Banner that bright from the dawning 
Flaunted its field of snow 
Only a summer ago 
Ye fled to, followed, and fawning. 

Fought from the night to know. 


My Banner that rallied your legions, 
Aweary, ahunger, athirst. 
Marshalled our ranks, dispersed 
The clouds from our younger regions 
Ere that the storm had burst; 


Gave back to your children their fathers. 
Peace, and a friendly sky— 

Faint when the war was nigh. 

Ye fled, and the storm wrack gathers. 
Fled at the battle cry 1 

What talk ye of cowards or cravens? 

Fear and the Flight and Flame, 

I stood to my Dream the same. 

What reck I the wrath of ravens 
That gloat on my glory-shame! 


28 









MOTHERS’ SONS 


‘‘As the ‘conscientious objectors’ were marched 
by to the prison, they were followed and 
scoffed at by an indignant crowd of patriots. 
One woman said, ‘I pray God their mothers 
may not see them now!’ ”—Daily Paper, dur¬ 
ing the War for England and France. 

EHIND their backs the barrier clangs. 
The gaping crowds go ’way. 

The swollen State has closed her 
fangs 

Above her meat today. 

They would not bow where your banner 
hangs 

Nor aid your servants slay. 

The people spat as they led them past. 

That shuffling hero line 
Of men that held their honor fast 
Tho conscript cravens whine 
And a mother shouts at the halting last, 
“Thank God, no sons o’ mine!” 

That night she dreamed ere morning broke. 
And other, elder Mothers spoke. 

Katherine Huss 

I turned my eyes from that dread place. 

I could not bear the sight. 

The white smoke curled about his face. 
His lips all stern and white. 

His spirit is damned by bock and bell. 
His ashes drift to sea. 



29 








The Church ha’ haled his soul to hell— 
Thank God, he were son o’ me! 

Margaret Luther 

Methinks that someone shouted 

Where my son, my son had passed. 

Thru the priestly droves he flouted. 
Thru the commoners aghast 

He passed, and never doubted 
Of a martyr’s crown at last. 

His holy books were seizen 
As false to Church and State. 

He stood to them to reason 
The harried spirit’s fate. 

They tried my son for treason. 

I know my son was great. 

And lo, ten thousand churches 
Bear his name above the door. 

No bloated Bishop lurches 
Thru the village any more. 

I think no treason smirches 
The son, the son I bore 1 

Mary Washington 

I saw your proud eyes darken 
At the bitter words they flung. 

And yet I smiled to hearken 

To the "craven” on their tongue. 

For had you lost, that cattle 
Had dubbed you “traitor” too. 

Because you won the battle, 

A people worships you. 


30 










ORTHODOXY 



E who never knew the Wrath, 
The madness rose from hell; 
Ye who tread the pansy path, 
And like it well; 


Ye who cry when ye are burnt. 

And sanely shun the fire; 

Ye whose souls have never learnt 
The wild Desire; 

Ye whose souls are milk and cream. 
Whose minds are coined in dies; 
Ye whose spirits never scream 
To smothered skies; 


Ye whose questing visions stand 
And cease where highways halt; 
Ye whose longings never fanned 
Insane revolt; 


Ye who love the Moral Laws, 
Whose passions never long 
To sin, and sin because 
Ye know it wrong; 


Ye who hide the sullen blow. 

And wreathe the naked sword. 
Ye who shame can never know 
Sathanas lord! 


31 









GERMANIA 



REASY smoke and gray, 

Here where the shadows sway; 
White face and torn gold hair 
Swirl thru the murky day; 

Wild bursts of music flare 
And sob themselves away. 

Chill-swung steel, and song 
Iron-cold, nor right nor wrong; 
Black mists and clinging smoke. 

Her thunders crash along; 

Cleft cloud and ruddy stroke, 
Rhythmic, thunder-strong. 

White bodies, naked, tom. 

Wild eyes and sorrow-worn; 

Red wrath and wreck and rue; 

Red nations, broken, bom; 

And she is a mother, too, 

Tho shamed sisters mourn. 

Red fruit, but redder seed, 

Gold and gain and greed. 

Clasped hands and haloed brow. 
Smug smirks from lips that bleed. 
Drive dear your virtues now— 

Cry your Christ indeed 1 

Scourged from your slavish sea. 
Bruised to her battered knee. 

No Book she flaunts, nor Palm; 

Facing the planet she. 

Tearless, cruel, and calm— 

Just Germany. 



32 








Ringed by the wolves of half the earth, 

Her gray lips set on her chilly mirth, 
Beautiful, desperate, bold, at bay. 

Her tired white hand on her sword hilt lay. 

The crisped curls from her eyes she swept. 
And gazed where her gray-green legions 
slept 

The Sleep that has no waking. 

And the helmet plume on her drooping head 
Dipped to the toll of the new-made dead 
Her thunder-guns were taking. 

Ringed by the gloom of the old world night, 
Her white face set in the murky light, 

And beautiful, desperate, cold, and gray. 
Victorious, defiant, her legions lay. 



33 








PRUSSIA 


GRAY iron race from the cold star 

spaces. 

Caged by a bungling birth 
With cold vast dreams of the dead 
dawn places 
On pitiful, puerile Earth, 

From lone stern strife with the dread dark 
legions. 

From worn war watch in the far night re¬ 
gions. 

We came iron-armed in the grim god fashion 

To long lied Hopes and your soft child pas¬ 
sion. 

What know ye of the deep dim dirges 

The sad stars sing in their ranked, slow 
surges ? 

The sweet swift swing of the raw glad bat¬ 
tle— 

Ye weep that a child is slain? 

A raw, red swath thru the fool fat cattle, 
And back to the night again! 













FROM “THE DEFENSE OF GOD” 


[Q 


II. 

THOU who once wast ruler, hark. 

For all the maiden souls that took 
the dark 

And sterile habit of thy cloisters, 
lost 

Their holy right to womanhood, the cost 

Of thy cold favor; sacred smothered dreams 

In virgin hearts that sank in dreadful 
gleams 

Of fleshless Love that bore nor fruit nor 
seed 

Save ‘peace’ and barren bliss that failed to 
feed 

The hungry hearts that could alone be stayed 

From little toothless gums against the 
breasts 

That covered them, or youthful faces laid 

With lips to lips and mingled breath, and 
eyes 

All wet with wonder— 


** . . When women saw the shades 

Of death dim hero eyes that shone for them 
(And crisp warm hair wherein her hands 
were used 

To stray, all thick with blood, and lips all 
bruised 

And cold that once had pressed her gar¬ 
ment’s hem;) 


35 








When starving peoples, bleeding hearts, and 
deep 

Dark utter agonized despair 
Found voice in blinded faith that did not 
weep 

But rose a vast long wail of praise and 
prayer 

To thee, O God, who let them suffer so t 
What sign gav’st thou thy people then to 
show 

Thou wast a God of love and right? No 
blow. 

Thou God, thou struck’st for them, no 
stricken girl 

Thou saved’st from shame, no thunder didst 
thou hurl 

To halt a million murders there that soaked 
A thousand miles in blood; the pain that 
choked 

The widow’s breast thou couldst not stay. 

“They fought 

Thy battles! O poor blinded peoples, naught 
Thou aidest them that bear thy banner; nay 
Nor dost thou care. Their fevered prayers 
were vain 

To win thy favor. Blood of martyrs slain 
And cheated monkish hearts, and waves of 
fire 

That purged rebellious hearts upon the pyre 
That would not do thy honor—all were vain. 

“O God, God, God, thou useless Dream, 
thou Lord 

That couldst nor save nor slay, whose feeble 
sword 


36 






uju^aaaiTOtBMwwa 

Was ever sheathed, who only drew’st thy 
breath 

Amid the incense smoke of broken sobs 

From faithful hearts, thou God of shame 
and death. 

Behold, this whole vast throng of judgment 
throbs 

Its hatred here. Thou little God, and weak. 

If still thou would’st that forfeit lordship, 
speak 1” 


III. 


“A dream—a dream—and poorly did ye 
dream, 

O ye my lordly Thinkers! Did ye deem 
When that ye shaped me in your souls that 

I, 

A thought, could change the other thoughts 
of fleet 

And sad delight? 

"Not mine the priestly yoke. 

The penance cells, the pyre, nor did I cheat 
Your hearts of bliss save when ye dreamed 
me so. 


"Not true my Word that brings 

The only solace that your dream world 
knew ? 

Ah, no—it was but false—and naught is 
true 

Save ye. And I who stand and plead am 
naught 

But dear and dreadful dreams of yours, a 
thought 


37 






Within your minds; and what I say is just 
Your own defense within your hearts of 
trust 

That once ye held, and senseless sacred hope 
That glozed the other horrors of your 
dreams. 


“ . . I did not seem 

To care? And yet the holy, foolish faith 
Ye held in me was greater far than aid 
Of thunderbolt or bright avenging blade. 


“Your visions now are clear. No more ye 
feel 

Your throats all choked with worshipping, or 
kneel 

To pour your anguish at the feet of one 

Whose glance was glory more than now ye 
know 

When ye are gods. Those tender dreams 
have ceased 

To be, ye say. They were not real; and yet 

O ye that once have loved, do ye forget 

How very sweet they were ? Could they 
then die. 

Those dreams of God? The cruel cold creed 
ye shun 

Was priestly made, not mine; but what my 
priest 

Could never know your lovers knew. The 
God 

The cloisters could not teach their kisses 
told; 

And sovran Souls, in all your new-found 
sway 


38 








O’er space and stars and flitting worlds, I 
pray 

Have yet ye found a joy half so sweet 
As Love, your foolish former dream, to 
greet 

Your poor unbodied selves? Would ye not 
give 

Your majesty once more to live 
With lordly dreams that were not true, but 
oh. 

So wondrous dear because ye dreamed them 
so ? 

“E’en loneliness and weariness and hearts 
Half-broken, numb with quiet, 'wildered pain. 
With faith half-shaken e’en in love that 
starts 

The dumb still questions in the weary brain. 
All listless longing, ashes left of love 
That burned itself away in whimp’ring flame 
To leave the dreary glimmers gray that 
move 

Across the hidden glow of angry shame 
That cannot choose but love, all hopeless 
still, 

And dream of dreams it never can fulfill— 

O Love, that never dies, the holy Lie, 

The pain that bears its own dear anodyne, 
The warm, wise, wistful throb of yearning, 
shy 

And lonely-sweet and pure and all divine. . . 

“But no, ye cannot choose 
But let me live. For take me from the sky 
And ye are less of gods yourselves. For I 
Am just the God in your own souls, my 
Lords, 


39 






That shapes all love and life beyond the dry 
And ashen emptiness that was ere words 
Of yours had made the flow’rs and fanes of 
earth 

Ye cannot dream without me. Lords. A 
dearth 

Of beauty would oppress your souls. Ah no, 
I am not true. I am a dream and so 
1 live within your hearts alone. Ye strive 
To drive me forth ? It cannot be. There 
are 

Nor earth nor man nor sky nor circling star 
Withouten me. Ye could not dream alive 
Your very selves, ye would but be a fog 
Of blank existence had ye not the power 
That ye corporify in me. Ye flog 
Me from your hall; adown the dark ye 
glower 

Against my face; and still beneath one name 
Or other ye had worshipped me, or passed 
To darkness, powerless, inchoate, a flame 
Of faded being—ghostly—gray—aghast I 

“But first, and last, and always I am 
Love, 

A high and holy dream all dreams above— 

A useless Thought, a Lie that may not give 
A single certainty,—but still in gleam 
Of mother eyes and silly love of maids 
And trust and foolish faith—I live—I live.” 


All gold and green the dawning glows. It 
fades— 

My Dream within a dream within a dream. 


40 









WHEN GOD WAS DEAD BEHIND US 

'HEN God was dead behind us and you 
were God to me. 

And I hurled the reeling: planets thru 
the boundless starlight sea; 

When I swung the swirling systems or 
cleared them with a breath. 

While countless nations worshipped tho I 
flung the flaming death; 

When the flare of a billion altars flecked the 
aching space 

And I drove the cheerful comets on their 
heedless, happy race; 

When you were the dusky goddess, queen 
of the Shadow land. 

I yearned in my empty splendor for the 
warmth of your mortal hand. 

And the dead space winds were chilly in 
that void between the suns, 

Tho I was the God, your master, and Lord 
of the mighty ones. 



And my Empire’s dead behind me and you 
are dead to me, 

For I left my flaming legions in the inky 
ether sea. 

And my slavish stars are scornful, and the 
deadly depths between. 


41 









Their God is a prisoned spirit . . and you 
are still—a Queen 1 

When the endless cycle wheels again 
At the end of time. 

And I take my crown from the senseless 
thing, 

The soulless Crime; 

When I cleanse my skies of their burning 
stain, 

As I surely will. 

Will I damn your soul to screaming pain 
Or love you still? 


APHROGENEIA 


HAT pangs the cold sea knew, O Love, 
To give thy beauty birth. 

(Oh, the foam below and thy breast 
above. 

Thy lips, and wistful mirth!) 



For thou wast not, O Love, O sweet. 
When Ocean bore thy bloom. 

What tumult made her pulses beat 
And shaped thee in her womb ? 

Ah, that were a gladless birth, O Love. 

Her moaning lips still strain 
For thine or a lover’s lips above 
Her vast and vacant pain. 


42 








A DEDICATION 



SENT my soul to wander 
Beyond the curtained mist. 

To pierce the dimness yonder. 
The veils of cloud you kissed; 


To see, beyond the borders 
Of scent or sound or sight. 
The void where Nothing orders 
The nothing of the Night. 


I crowned my brows with vision 
To bring to you the crown. 

Because you scorned my mission 
I laid my godhead down. 

To scale the dusky mountains 
And creep and cup the dew 

Of foam of fairy fountains 
And bring the cup to you. 

Wan realms beyond the River 

I stormed and brought you back 

Great blooms of blood that quiver 
From waxen buds of black, 

Or raped their bowers of rushes 
For wreaths of ghostly green 

For you, O blaze and blushes. 

And crowned with curls my Queen I 


And lest you die tomorrow. 

Who crushed from out my soul 
These blood-foamed wines of sorrow, 
I bring you back the whole. 


43 







CREDIDI 


LITTLE Temple Keeper 

Between the dark and dawn. 
Guard deep, and clasp it deeper. 

The Seal thy God laid on! 

Because your soul was beauty. 
Because your skies were white, 

To you the dreadful duty 

To guard the Flame tonight. 

O Anthem hushed and hazy! 

O Satrap to the God! 

O star-souled, deathless Daisy, 

Where the Purple Poppies nod! 

O little Vestal Tender, 

Watcher by the Flame! 

Nor yours its silken splendor, 

Nor yours to give nor blame. 

And yours no careless Crowning, 
Yours no barren gift. 

With the ghastly Gates afrowning. 
While the sleepless shadows shift. 

To Him, not you, the Glory, 

From Him your eyes and hair; 

To Him the soft-sobbed Story, 

To Him, who made you fair. 

O Flowers upon the Altar, 

To glimpse the Grace behind! 

Ye mean too much to falter— 

The Beauty wise and kind. 



44 









Thru you the God is weaving 
The vastest, truest Trust, 

The Proof of all Believing, 

The Shrine behind the Dust! 

And hair and throat and fingers, 
The Vestal Flame is thine. 
And oh! the Night still lingers, 
O Keeper of the Shrine! 


DONA FERENTIS 


33 


N the cruel, sane day 
I know my worth. 
And yours I know, 

O wonder and beauty 
snow, 


of dusk and 


On the waking earth 
So far away 1 


But in the pitiful night 
You’re close . . so near! 

And rustling sweet in the dreamland light 
Your patient glory passes. 

And dreamy winds in the drowsy grasses 
Drift your dusky ringlets clear. 


Stars in your eyes in the grayness there, 
Warmth of your breath on the tingling air 
Where your face like a flower in the shadow 
gleams. 

The warm litle clasp of those hands of 
thine . . . 

Are mine . . 

In dreams. . . 


45 








MADONNA MIA 


ITH all the world a madness, one lone¬ 
some, livid pain, 

(Gray, tattered curtains drooping 
thru a steaming crimson brain) 

Would God I had the solace of my fathers’ 
Faith again! 

Yea, I know Belief a falsehood, a cowardly 
foolish thing. 

But sweet your trusting worship where your 
golden windows fling 

Soft, rainbow-tinted glories down the shad¬ 
ows of the wing. 

The golden warm Madonnas asmoulder on 
the glass 

Athwart the scented Silence where the muf¬ 
fled pinions pass, 

Adown the rolling wonder and the music of 
the Mass— 

And soft upon the sorrow where his sweet¬ 
est tortures smart. 

O Mary, Virgin Mary! Canst thou take 
another Part— 

The Holy of the Holies of a foolish boyish 
heart ? 

For dear your peaceful presence where your 
pictured purples stain 

The pageant of your worship thru the thun¬ 
dering refrain. 

But oh! I know thee nearer in a sweeter, 
fairer Fane! 











Did God then paint those crosses, dawn-gilt 
and morning-cold ? 

Or rear yon stony altar, marble white and 
dusky gold? 

But He made the rosy Anguish where the 
wings of Longing fold 1 

Is God behind the blackness where your sol¬ 
emn censers swirl ? 

The music and the movement and the candle 
flames acurl ? 

Is it wrong that when I worship I worship 
just—a girl ? 

And thru the golden stillness from the 
stained windows there. 

And thru the softened shadows like a stilly 
wisp of prayer . . . 

Adown the filmy darkness—filmy whispers 
of your hair? 



47 










OTHERWISE 

SOUGHT not the scent of your hair, 
dear. 

The lift of your lips for sign; 

- Only, I knew you were fair, dear. 

Worshipped and wished you mine. 

Not for your sob in the dark, dear. 

Purple that dulls and dies; 

Only the mist, and—hark, dear— 

Promise that stars your eyes. 

Only my fairy and friend, dear. 

Laughter and lips and curls; 

Only to have, nor to spend, dear. 

Your russet, and rose, and pearls. 

Is it wrong ? Are they less ? Are they 
more, dear? 

The gifts that you give to them ? 

The blushes and bliss you pour, dear? 

The russet, the rose, and gem? 

Is mine then more than a gift, dear, 

The gifts in your eyes I sought? 

The trust that should lean and lift, dear. 
The hush from your hidden thought? 

Yea, more than your breath or your kiss, 
dear. 

And all that your lips can do. 

Only, remember you this, dear— 

The Gift that I give to you I 


48 









“HELEN” 



RIEND that I hailed on the waters 
When midnight sank on the sea. 
Who, darling and dearest of daughters 
Of men, came unto me; 


Laid hand in my hand and watched by me 
Thru dusk and the dark and the dawn; 
Who daunted the dreads that defy me 
Till twilight and terror were gone; 


The smile in your eyes of a sadness 
That means more than fairy or friend, 
But Friend with a glory of gladness 
Of beauty bereft of an end; 

Your lips that have smiled as they quivered. 
Your eyes, that have softened with tears; 
Brave heart that stood by me and shivered 
Not at unknowable fears; 


We who have stood to the hisses 

Of serpentine shapes of the shade— 
How know I caresses or kisses. 

Or thou, who art more than a maid ? 

And now tho in morning I miss you. 

And grieve as your grieving I mark, 

Yet how, O my Comrade!—how kiss you? 
We Two, who have stood to the Dark! 


49 






"—BEFORE YOU KNEW” 



OMETIMES, amid the pain 
Of loving you, 

I would I knew you less again, 
Before you knew. 


Sometimes, when questions sting 
And answers smart, 

I see the old cloud glories cling 
By thee, apart. 


Sometimes, when idols fall. 

My starved lips curl; 

I mind when thou wast All to all, 
A Goddess girl. 


Sometimes, when human hope 
And longing mar 

The worship where I used to grope 
And thee, my Star, 

Sometimes, tho flesh is fair, 

The Holies pine 

For days when thou wast Goddess 
there 

And they were thine. 

Sometimes, amid the pain 
Of loving you, 

Would God I knew you less again, 
Who never knew. 


60 







| *i. V C ,^-g- - -y.g?-c *u f . 


IN RED AND BLACK 



OUR song in the golden morning. 
The roses red on your dusky head. 
Blood on blood adorning! 


And swept by a surf of sobbing. 

The grasses beat at your lovely feet, 
The whole mad world athrobbing. 


& 


& 


Gave I the Gods my naked soul. 

To torture or to slay. 

Think you the Gods would give the dole. 
The girlish gift I pray? 


Deem you, with blood to sate their lust. 
The Gods would give me You? 

But blood and souls are cheap as dust— 
And Isabels so few! 


Red lips and curls and breathing snow— 

Oh, God! my darling . . lest you know 
The hells we feel, gray paths we go! 

Vast purple poppies vaunt and veer— 

Poison things. And star-souled, clear, 

By their shadowed stems . a daisy, dear! 


I know it for what it is: 

Black flames in the smothered dark. 
The hell of the shadow kiss. 

Glare-white, and red, and stark. 


61 






I know It for what It is: 

(Soft lights and shadows dim; 
Blind eyes that lift to his— 

To him 1) 


Red hopes on an ashen bier; 

Dead stars, deep set, and mad— 
And yet (I love you, dear,) 

I’m glad I 


Dumb, silent songs my broken soul might 
sing, 

Spoke it with spirit tongue 
Where anguished wrongs their stifled voice 
might fling 

The voiceless veils are flung. 


Softly the clay they fold, 

The earth and the kindly mould, 
The merciful dark, the cold . . 
Rest . while the stars grow old. 


It’s only the brain that’s biting. 
Only life that stings: 

Gray years of madness, fighting 
The passion things. 


Cold fire like molten lead. 

Cold fire that longing fed . . . 
Now, and the fires are dead. 

And dear, dark years ahead 

Where the empty aeons roll . . 
A kind and a dreamless bed . . 
The soul? 

Thank—Fate, there is no soull 


62 









FORGETTING 



PRING; green myst’ries that I knew; 
Days rose-pearled, and wet 
With humble tears; and you . . 

O God! Let me forget! 


Spring; and soft, strange skies, 
Unmapped, unguessed as yet; 
Spring; and Promise in your eyes . . 
O God! Let me forget! 


Spring; and the things you said. 
Dream things I never met; 

Gone, and the dreams are dead . . 
And now. let me forget! 

Dusk; and the shadows fall; 

Rose gleams; and now. Lord, let 
The darkness drown them all. 

Yea, God, let me forget. 

They burn, those rose-rayed suns, 
My poor blind soul . . and yet . . 
Not now, O Sweet . . but Once— 
Oh, God! Lest I forget! 



63 










RECAPITULATION 



LL that I had I have given. 

All that I have I would give. 
Always for you I have striven. 
Only for you that I live. 


Never I prayed for a guerdon, 
Watching my arms by the sea, 
Save that I lighten your burden, 
Suffer thy sorrow for thee. 


Bring they the tiniest sweetness. 
Dreams that I lay at your feet, 

Touch with a tenderer fleetness. 

Sweeten your dreams more sweet? 

Vain did I dream that a sorrow 
Borne in the shadow alone 

Helped thee in thine, or could borrow 
Pain of your heart for my own ? 

Lips to the hem of your raiment, 

Once you have listened, and hark: 

That- and the night were repayment— 
That, and the infinite Dark. 


64 








iSjasEg^fa} 


THE SONG OF SONGS: WHICH IS 
SOLOMON’S 

(As It Might Have Been Done) 

EHOLD, thou art fair, my love. 
Behold, thou art very fair; 

The folds of thy veil above 
Thine eyes like the nestled dove. 
And like unto fleece thine hair 
Of flocks that graze on Gilead. 

IV :1 -3. 

Thy teeth like the ewes new-shorn. 
New-washed in the springs at morn, 
And nuzzled by lambs twin-born. 

Thy lips are a crimson thread 
That limns thy lovely mouth; 

And rosy as pomegranate rind 
Thy temples gleam behind 
The veil that wraps thy head. . . 
VII :l-2. 

O Daughter of Kings, how sweet 
The tread of thy sandalled feet. . . 

Thy body’s shapely cup 
Is magic with mingled wine; 

Thy waist as a sheaf bound up 
With lilies and poppy vine. . . 

VII :5. 

The splendors of Carmel lair 
In thy tresses of purple hair. 

And a King is a captive there! 



55 

) 


> > 


> 








“JOSEPH, THE HUSBAND OF MARY” 



NLY a girl, my God, 

Mary, my maid, to me; 

Her lips and her dimpled hand; 
Ah, God, canst Thou understand 
What can she mean to Thee? 


? 


Mine only heaven. Lord; 

Dusk and the dawn, and dew, 
Roses, and twilight snow— 

Ah, God, can You ever know? 
What can she mean to You? 


I knew not the angels. Lord, 

But only a life of pain. 

Of longing and love to live. 

Ah, would that Thy Day could give 
Mary, and night, again I 

I too had my dreams, my Lord, 
Dreams that I dreamed divine. 

Oh, heart of our hearts, my Wifel 
The warm little lilts of life . . 

Yea, for the dreams were Thine. 

Souls Thou hast shown, O God, 
Music of flower and flame, 

And yearnings that drank more deep 
Of sweetness that stirred, asleep; 
Nay ? and Thine Angel came. 

Sainted, they say, my God ? 

Holy her heart, her eyes ? 

Oh, Mary, my maid! And yet. 


56 







> oy. j> -.V. ®. 4*.. K* -9 




HI 


Can lips that have loved forget. 
Enthroned in the scented skies? 

Nor Glory nor gold, O God, 

Nor worship, nor Savior son. 

Nor splendor of Thine can make 
More holy her heart, or shake 
The love that has made us one. 

O Thou who art strong, and God I 
Tho I am a man, and weak, 

My desperate days have known 
Her heart against my own. 

Her cheek against my cheek. 


And lo! by the Throne, O God, 

Her eyes are agleam with tears. 
The glittering gates of gold, 

The anthems of angels rolled 
Are strange on her heart, and cold; 

And glimmering space appears 
A beckoning, friendly sea. 

An ocean of fadeless foam. 

With billows that flame and fall, 
Whose trackless traverses call 
Her home. 

To me. 



57 



I*** *&r r-. 


FRAGMENTS 

A Prayer to Astarte 



GODDESS and Mother, Astarte, 

The fires on thine altars are dim. 
They kneel to another, Astarte, 

And twine all their garlands for him. 


Yet still by the portal, Astarte, 

I bow in the shadows alone, 

O only immortal, Astarte, 

And wind thee a wreath of my own. 

Thy mysteries slay me, Astarte. 

I kneel where thy censers were, 
But thou dost betray me, Astarte— 
Thy last true worshipper. 

The world is a madness, Astarte. 

Thy temples are crazy with crime. 
The shrines of thy gladness, Astarte, 
Are crumbling in ruinous slime. 

Thy mercy, thy pardon, Astarte, 

O thou who alone art divine! 

They roam in thy garden, Astarte, 
And know not its blossoms for thine. 


They dirty thy raiment, Astarte, 

And soil all its white with a name. 
And give for repayment, Astarte, 
The spurious coinage of shame. 

Oh, come with thy splendor, Astarte, 
Thy womanly, wonderful blade— 
Oh, hearken I and render, Astarte, 
Thine aidl 


68 






V * . Ht 




O beauteous, blind Astarte, O longing and 
love that are Godl 
Pardon the ways we have trod. 

Kneeling austere at an altar straitened with 
justice, and stark; 

Goddess of whispers that falter. Goddess of 
tears in the dark, 

Astarte, oh, hark I 

Compassionate, kind Astarte,—thou timid, 
with tremulous lips. 

Mistress of magic that slips 

Over the earth in the Maytime, making for 
maidens the eyes 

Bright with the pleasures of playtime sweet¬ 
er with sacred surprise; 

O loveliness, life—Astarte—O Love that is 
human and blind. 

Murmurs that mean to be kind, 

Yearning that gropingly blesses its pitiful 
efforts to aid. 

Whispers and wistful caresses, and tender¬ 
ness timid, afraid; 

O Goddess, O glad Astarte, O thou in the 
heart of the maid. 

Crumpled and holy and laid 

Warm in the arms of her lover, a frail little 
figure that clings— 

Quavering kisses that cover a longing for 
lovelier things— 


59 





And holiest, last . . Astarte . . the mouth 
of a miracle pressed 
Soft to a heaven of breast. 

Fat little fingers that furrow all pinkly a 
bosom of white. 

Babyish eyes that burrow blinking away 
from the light. 

A woman—a wonder—Astarte—a comrade— 
Creatrix—and queen, 

Not dimly a deity seen. 

Nor dreadful with dooming decision, nor aw¬ 
ful, omnipotent grace, 

But lovely, a virginal vision, and trembling, 
with tears on your face. 

O friendly and futile, Astarte—O helpless 
and holy and great! 

O feeble,—and stronger than Fate! 

Our hearts are as altars before you, our 
souls as a sacrifice burn. 

Oh, help us be fit to adore you—oh, let us 
be pure, in return! 



60 





















II. 

HERE BEGINS THE 
SECOND PART 
OF THESE RHYMES 














































































































Rhymes ( i i ) 


KRINIR YAR KRONE 

LIDING aslant of the blaze of stars 
The triple moonlets swung. 

You were the Queen of the southern 
lands. 

The Krone Canal and the Scarlet Sands, 

And I was the Lord of the north of Mars 
When Northern Mars was young. 

The deserts were dappled with drifting flare, 
The waters had hidden their face. 

Mid Martian shout and Jovian yell 
The flaming flail of the fire-beam fell, 

Where Mars met full in the shifting air 
The horror of alien space. 

But mute in the roar of the Midland pumps 
We watched the floods and the foam-bells 
leap 

To the Krone Canal from the Polar Way, 

In moonlit splendors of silver spray 
That glimmered and dripped from the crim¬ 
son clumps 

Of small sad shrubs by the waters’ sweep. 

And gold was aglow in your eyes, my queen. 
As gold was agleam in your hair. 

Your white hands clung to my crusted helm. 
Your white throat sobbed for your ravaged 
Realm, 



3 










And—two wild words and a kiss between— 

I fled, and left you there. 

You watched by the brink of the Thorian 
Lake 

The vultures gape and gorge. 

And there you swore, where I died for you, 
Your soul more true than the stars are true. 
Such vows as the years nor the light-years 
shake . . 

So why did you marry George? 



4 








IN THE ARMY OF ANTHONY 
He 



DIE tomorrow. 

And you shall be 
A white-lipped sorrow 
Beyond the sea. 


I die tomorrow, 

O heart of love. 

That these may borrow 
A part of love— 


For m'ore than duty 
Is this we do. 

We die for beauty; 

I die for you— 

In thus wild manner 
Allegiance hold 
To more than banner 
Or Eagle-gold; 


To more than warning 
Of cold commands— 

To rose-crowned morning. 
And clinging hands! 


We die tomorrow 
That this shall be 
A great-souled sorrow 
Eternally. 

She 

Octavia's lips in Rome are white 
Tonight, 


5 










Octavia’s widow heart forlorn 
And torn; 

You die tomorrow. 

And we shall be 
A white-lipped sorrow 
This side the sea . . 


Ah—Gods we cannot understand 
Command. 


FOR VIRGINIA 


SI 


IGHT, and the brief lamps passing; 
Lights; and the warm air flowing; 
Starshine, and shadows massing; 
Dim thoughts glowing; 


And you, unknowing. 


Moment and moment fleeting. 

Magic and one night flying; 

Loneliness, now, completing 
Visions that you left lying, 

Here, in my heart, undying. 

Moonlight and mists and the mountains 
pass. 

And star light smooth on the sun-worn 
grass. 

This never will pass. 


6 












COMMUTING 


Morning 



HE dawn is on the hills; 

The east is drenched with day 
Like golden wine that spills 
Its glow across the gray. 

The trembling morning thrills 
To our rush along the way. 


The eastward hill-tops loom 

Their crumpled crests on high, 
A mass of purple gloom 
Against an orange sky. 

The frosty metals boom. 

The dawn is roaring by. 

The world is gold and gray, 

But wet and sunless green 
On hurtling straightaway 
And clanging curve’s careen 
The whipping willows sway 
To meet our rush between. 


A fleeting shadow whirls 
Thru faded fields forlorn; 

A swimming vista swirls 

Down rolling ranks of corn. 
The mountain thunder hurls 
Our wheels to race the morn. 


Evening 

The dark’ning westward glows 
Against a darker sky 
With feeble wisps of rose 
And purple gold that die. 


7 







The chill gray gloaming goes. 

The night is storming by. 

The bitted storms we tame 
Are roused to rage the more 

In floods of emerald flame 
That foam above the roar. 

The glare that puts to shame 
The thunder-bolts of Thor! 

The shimmering vistas flash 
And fade before my face. 

The lightnings lunge and lash 
The shadows into place. 

The rocking rotors crash 
Their heavy headlong race. 

The night winds whistling clear. 
The sky-line circling slow; 

The darkness dazed and drear 
Where the fleeing shadows flow; 

The reeling tree-tops near, 

The roaring rails below! 

The last rose gleam is gone. 

The last faint light is fled. 

One vast forsaken lawn 

The gray dark flats are spread. 

The lightning plunges on 

Thru spaces spumed and dead. 

The current leaps and flares 
In crisp and crackling chrome. 

A quivering greenness glares 
Across the pallid loam 

Thev bidden thunder bears 
Me home. 


8 







*1 ■> V ..-g- - < ». fc'''v:A ; lV^ 


I 


SIGNAL HILL 

IERRICK shadows loom against the 
night. 

Soaring—roaring—pouring 
— - — I Gouts of oily gloom and grimy light. 

Shades emerge and skulk, in aimless toil, 
Clanging, banging—hanging 
High above the hulk, or delved in oil. 
Stalking shadow stamps and shudders back. 
Clanking, cranking planking. 

Lit with sickly lamps and greasy black. 

Straining boilers burst their valves and hurl 
Streaming, screaming, gleaming 
Scimitars accurst of pillared pearl. 

Liquid shadows blot the pipes that flow— 
Humming, drumming, coming 
Still and swift and hot, a mile below. 

Men have thrust a knife, that stabs and stuns 
Droning, moaning, groaning 
Earth, who bleeds her life for these, her sons. 



9 








l CTisaiMt»g aajaAaiL>Lg l 


RESTITUTION 


HO music is mute to me, and the 
viol’s deep sighing 
Unmeaning and dumb; 

Tho the song of the flute to me, and 
the trumpets’ crying, 
Inarticulate come, 

Yet restitute to me are the sun’s great 
dying, 

And the night winds numb. 

The fearful and futile sea, and the fierce 
foam flying 

Till the stars succumb; 

And man, immutably, unfrighted, defying; 

And the brave war drum; 

And lips refuting ye, and hearts denying. 
And the eyes that plumb. 

For thus must beauty be for my descrying, 
And these are some 

That, restitute to me, in my deep heart 
lying. 

In the twilight come. 

But music is mute to me, and the trumpets’ 
crying 

Unmeaning and dumb. 



10 













MONOTONE 


HAT lies, I wonder, deep down, under 
The reticent roots of the grass. 
Where sunlight nor thunder shall 
mark asunder 
The limitless years that pass? 



The year is dying. Wan leaves are flying. 

All gray is the summerless season. 

As tho for token the sun has broken 
The heart of the earth with treason 


And left forsaken whose lips had taken 
The spring from his lips of light. 

His ringlets shaken shall never waken 
The sleep that she sleeps tonight. 

The day dies dreary beyond the weary 
Indefinite wastes of the west. 

The morning merely illumes more clearly 
A world without passion or rest; 

A world without weeping, or laughter, or 
sleeping— 

A saddened succession of trances. 

Of pale winds creeping, of lorn leaves leap¬ 
ing 

In hueless and horrible dances. 

The gray streets glimmer; and darker, dim¬ 
mer, 

In tired towers, vacant of pity. 

Their sick slaves fashion with hands grown 
ashen 

A shroud to encircle the city. 


11 





The gray clouds cover the hills, and hover, 
A curse on the cold clean air. 

And lover by lover, the dumb clods cover 
The young and the wise and the fair. 

What lies, I wonder, deep down, under 
The pitiful roots of the grass, 

Where sunlight nor thunder divide asunder 
The desolate days that pass ? 


IN ORDER 



MILLION years the morning set the 
eastern sky aflame 
With fairy streams and flaring 
pools of rose and gold. 

And whorls of liquid light and tingling tints 
without a name. 

As tho seraphic standards there above the 
angels rolled. 

Tonight, the last of endless evenings will 
the earth reclaim 

And cloak the hills with patient purple, 
fold on fold. 

A billion suns had blazed and burned away 
before you came 

To make this miracle of music, and to 
mold 

Of all the joyous universe a frame 

Unto thy loveliness, Isolde. 


12 









SUMMA 



HE sadness of summer sleeping 
Aslant of the yellow lands. 

The long, warm shadows creeping 
And slowly, over the sands, 

The sea’s warm, quiet weeping; 
The warm wind on my hands. 


The dry, wan grass-tops driving 
Adrift in the westwind’s breath 
The purposeful April’s thriving 
Hath ripened and scattereth. 

And this is the end of striving. 
The harvest; and this is death. 


13 









BEAUTY 


ld 


KNOW that beauty only is the bestial 
brand 

Imprinted on our hearts when belly- 
hunger smote us, or the spring— 
That beauty has no sacred message that the 
seraphs understand. 

But only mocking lure and laughter that 
the brutal past may fling; 


That beauty once meant marrow bones and 
drenching blood 
And auroch’s dying bellow; 

That beauty once meant cubs and food 
And honey dripping yellow. 

And now is meaningless 
To ban or bless. 


(Summer evening hazy blue along the walnut- 
wooded hills l) 

I know it is a homeless, hungry flame 

That burns along the hills of barren amber- 
dun. 

The sunset-colored summits lit with blue 
and molten gold; 

(Sudden dancing dust-clouds in the sun!) 

That smokes beneath the canyon scent of 
sleepy sycamores, 

That flickers where the poplars glimmer, 
white and green. 

Above a weary, level land. 


14 









This beauty—all the angel in our hearts— 

(Sunlight on the bladed green, and waves and 
caves of corn!) 

Is false, unmeaning, purposeless; 

And I am sick with scorn. 

But while I live, my soul can only say 
With other delving fools that waste and 
wear away their youth 
That Beauty is the meaning. Beauty is the 
purpose, Beauty is the Truth. 

So beauty is screaming of apes at the feast, 

An urge and a gleaming whose purpose has 
ceased, 

But better its seeming than horror, at least, 
And living is dreaming and man is a beastl 



15 







W. J. B. 

An Experiment in Extravagant Rhyme 


0 



OU moan your rage. What star, 
what sign 

Has shown, O Sage, you are divine 


? 


And God ashamed must see this prim 
Poor clod that claimed to be like him ? 


I find such clinging fear as this 
The kind of thing your spirit is: 

In dread of death, disgust with life. 

You sped each breath in dusty strife. 

You built a Faith, and called it sweet— 

A guilty wraith, a bald conceit 

That bade you place yourself as lord 
Of shady space and elfen sward, 

And bleating call your hardened crew 
To eat of all the garden grew,— 

And grimmer feasts your marts have seen— 
The timid beasts whose hearts are clean. 

You made your God, empowered to rule 
With blade and rod, a coward and fool. 

You shaped a Law; you bought, betrayed. 
And aped an awe of what you made 1 


16 









You peer behind the veil of things 
For fearless, kind, unfailing springs— 

You faint and flee and cry and cringe; 
Then paint with glee a lying fringe 

About the garment of the Night; 

Or shout of harmless Love and Light. 

You grope in vain on ev’ry quest. 

In hopeless pain, for heav’nly rest. 

I find in clinging fear like this 
The kindi of thing your spirit is. 

You moan your rage. What Star, what 
Sign 

Has shown you. Sage, you are divine? 



17 










teV^j&iw«i4aiJ!aaiiMi.4 aa 


THE MAN OF SORROWS 

ND you have suffered, Christ, have 
suffered so? 

I saw you blind among the blinded 
walk; 

And all the wand’ring weariness of talk 
And quest was gray upon your lips. . . I 
know. 

Each inch you forced the shadows back, each 
slow 

Small footstep on the restless search was 
fraught 

With stunned and straining puzzlement— 
each thought v 

A dull-drawn blade that gnawed your brain. 

I know. 

O brave and kind, I know the sudden hate 
That whipped them from the temple court 
and cursed 

The barren tree; and why the tears 
would flow; 

The drugged loneliness, the desperate 

And groping grasp for truth that mocked, 
the thirst 

For good—till you were glad to die . . 

I know. 


18 









ECCE HOMO 


1 


| HEY did you wrong, a bitter wrong, 
O sad great son of man. 

And all their song was silly song. 
And all their legends ran 
To cloak with flowers those dreadful hours, 
Those paths that you have trod; 

To make your glory a children’s story 
And you a ghastly God. 


The sad sea sleeps within her shores. 

The desert mountains dream. 

The wild, unwaited rain-storm pours. 
The same still headlands gleam. 


But powers have risen, empires passed. 
Have bowed and bent the knee. 

While prince and pope adored aghast 
A monkish mummery. 

The red blood blurred the thirsty blade. 

The white fire ringed them round. 

Whom frightened zealots racked and slayed 
To prove you Christ and crowned. 

The Prince of Peace is armed with rods 
And served with smoking sword. 

The Son of Man who scorned the gods 
Is hailed as God and Lord. 

There were no angel wings around you in 
the shade. 

In your green gloom-engirdled garden and 
the night. 


19 






Gethsemane, and that long evening when 
you prayed 

To your own soul and crowned your own 
sad brows with light. 

But ghosts of tortured men and wraiths of 
men who died. 

And dizzy, drifting dreams of woe as yet 
to be. 

And impotence and hate were sentries by 
your side. 

You stirred your dusty hair and raised 
your white face free. 

No devil voices tempted you. No foolish 
fiend 

Had part in that numb pain when twilight 
let you see 

What thoughtless day and strident noon had 
almost screened. 

The fundamental fear, the vast Futility. 

All night you strove to build on nothing¬ 
ness ; to plan 

In blood, in sweat and tears, in utter pain 
to give 

A promise and a hope, a pledge of peace, to 
man, 

A brotherhood, a Reason and a Right to 
live. 

O man, O more than God, O brave and des¬ 
olate ! 

If you had known when that white morn¬ 
ing shook the palm 


20 









That this great gesture in the foolish face 
of fate 

Would throne you as a God, would you 
have grown so calm ? 

For gods will always die. But you have 
built a stone 

In man’s frail walls that keep out chaos 
and the night. 

Have flung your body in the bulwark’s gap, 
alone 

To face the dark, defend our fiction of 
the Right. 

It were no bravery for God to fall, and rise 

So soon from death, with ordered heavens 
waiting him— 

But you were man, defying void, sardonic 
skies. 

Your banners on the last Frontier, on 
Chaos rim. 

And we await in weakness one far day, 
when hearts afire 

Shall wake to realization, the anthems and 
the organs roar. 

The world’s wide temples ring and rock to 
man’s terrestial choir— 

"Ecce homo, filius hominis, hominum salvator!” 


21 







DILEMMA 


F wretchedness and poverty must 
hurt me 

And sights of sordid sorrow wring 
my heart, 

The joyousness of riches should divert me, 
And careless beauty bid my laughter start. 


D 


But cloth of gold and proud, repulsing pal¬ 
aces. 

And mirth and music stir my angry pain. 
Elusive acid, strange beyond analyses, 

In beauty, is corroding all my brain. 

There is no peace on earth for such as me 
While tragedy and beauty dwell apart 
And mirthfulness and men are separate. 
The sodden sordid woes I ache to see. 

The beauty and the strength that break 
my heart, 

Are one in ceaseless and the self-same 
Hate. 


22 










SONG IN TIME OF DISORDER 


KINGS of the earth, the world is 
alight 

With the flaming of fresh desires, 
A gleam that is neither of day nor 
of night 

Nor the glow of the altar fires 1 



O Lords of the earth, the world is astir. 
And a storm from the hearts of men 
Has swept the seas where your galleys were. 
There never are slaves again. 


O Lords of the treasures from under the 
earth 

That ye win by the workers’ hands. 

And what are the gold and the parchments 
worth. 

Or the gleam of your jewelled bands ? 

When the sinews serve but the inward light 
That now have served your gold 
What power will be in the gilded might 
That bought ye power of old? 

Two things there are in this lonely star. 
Two things beneath the sky: 

The toil men give whereby we live, 

The dreams wherefore we die. 

And what is the strength in a sceptre’s length 
And what in a diadem— 

Or what have ye in your treasury 
To give ye glut of them ? 





And what is the good of your golden hoard, 

Your tokens of tinsel and gilt? 

For these are the hands that have held the 
sword. 

And these are the brains that built! 

And these are the bodies ye bought with 
gold— 

But what if ye cannot buy? 

And why should they barter whose hands 
can hold 

The earth and the sea and the sky! 



24 










WHO ARE THE STRONG? 

An interested query addressed to certain 
Pseudoscientific sociologists who pretend to 
see in the inequalities of society the inevitable 
manifestation of the laws of organic evolution 
—the survival of the fittest, the ”Nemesis of 
the weak—catch words which they have 
snatched from the frothy puddle of current 
“culture.” 



HO are the Strong? 

The coarse cry storms along 
The shattered walls and shakes the 
citadel. 


Who are the Strong ? 

A wailing of want and wrong. 

And the hate of the fiends of Hell— 


Who are the strong? 

A sobbing of terrible song 
Affrights ye where ye dwell! 

O ye that have shamed our sages. 

Who perjure the printed pages 
For proof that the awful ages 

Have hallowed your right to rule. 

Who preen yourselves, and prattle, 

Think ye that the cosmic battle 
Has crowned such Christless cattle 
And throned the filching fool ? 

For ye they read the record of the stones. 
And men have starved and shamed them 
selves for this— 


25 







That ye should mark complacently these 
moans, 

The pain that builds the bulwarks of your 
bliss ? 

For this they reft the secret from the rocks. 

The battle with the beast that made us men. 

That ye should claim this privilege of the 
fox 

And snarl above your booty in your den? 

The implacable fulfillment of the Law 

Ye warp in little minds that would confute 

The prayers and songs that held the earth 
in awe, 

The Dream that made us dreader than the 
brute. 

That ye may seek to scare the famished 
throng 

With garbled words of greater men, and 
strive 

To salve your spirits,—saying: “We are 
strong. 

“The weak must perish. Lo, the Strong 
survive 1” 

But . . “Who are the Strong?” 

The cold cry storms along 

The weakened walls and shakes your citadel. 

The purple pomp of empire for an hour, 

And poor slaves crouching at a lance’s 
length— 

Ye deem it power? 


26 







Ye call it strength? 

Ye think that ye are “fit” 

Because of it? 

And pompous lords of lands and pond’rous 
kings of gold, 

For this was all the striving? For this the 
aeons rolled. 

To shape your fattened faces from the clean 
and honest mould? 

Are ye the Triumph crowning all the cen¬ 
turies ? 

For this our souls were sundered from the 
slime ? 

The blind unanxious ages find in such as 
these 

Their masterpiece, and greet the Goal of 
time ? 

So be it then, 

O little men! 

The beasts of the wilderness laugh, 

And all the insensate earth 

Will make your dominion as chaff. 

As dust on the gales of her mirth! 

The weak must die! ye cry; 

And oh, but ye are weak, who seek. 

With futile fortressing, to cling 
A little space, unto the place 
That ye have bought 
With blood and lies and tears 
And fraught 
With fears. 


27 








*« r »tv -*--V V. * *'. 


Then pray your guideless stars and godless 
skies 

That these, who own the earth, may never 
learn 

This gospel of the jungle that ye prize 

And wield that righteous rule to break and 
burn I 

For—who are the Strong ? 

The coarse cry storms along 

The shattered walls and shakes the citadel. 

For—they are the strong. 

And the goods of the world belong 

To them, by your own cold creed from Hell! 

And lo, your little day is fading into night. 

The weak that once ye ruled with wrath and 
wrong 

Are heirs to all your City, and rulers by 
your Right— 

And fifteen thousand thousand thousand 
strong! 


28 






THE ALTRUIST 



E R H A P S when youth is burned to 
rest, 

A fragrant altar fire. 

Whose leaping, fleeting gleams have 
blessed 

My fingers on the lyre. 

And I have drowned on woman’s breast 
The uttermost desire; 


When I am surfeited of song, 

And tired of tears that ran 
With thankfulness to live and long 
As each new day began, 

I shall have tears to weep the wrong 
That man doth unto man. 


Ah, censure not then overmuch 
That I seem sorrowless. 

And sing of happy hands that touch 
And laughing lips that bless. 

My greatest gift were only such 
Celestial Selfishness. 


29 







ON DIT QUE DIEU NOUS AIME 


I HEY say God loves, and yet 
How can He, dear. 

Whose eyes are never wet 
- For hope, or fear? 

What pain can ever bum 
That Heart above ? 

What anguish can He learn ? 
How can He love? 

Must needs a little flame 
Should drift and dart— 

A little, prideful shame— 

To love, sweetheart. 


* 



30 












n. > .v ® v „* 


IN GRAY AND GOLD 



And 


SHRINE stood far in a desert place, 
All lovely white and fair. 

(The hot dust clouds about my face, 
The solitudes stretch bare) 
lo, that temple seemed to bless 


My lonely life's sere wilderness. 


O Thou who wast given of wonder. 

E’en Thou who wast shapen of flame. 
With glory about Thee and under. 

All woven of dew-drops and thunder, 
And gladness and glory and shame! 


There is music that lies too deep, too deep, 
More dear than the tongue can tell, 
Than summery skies asleep, asleep. 

Than summery buds aswell — 

A prayer that sighs to keep, to keep, 

And bless you, Isabel. 


What can I give to you, dear,— 
Beautiful, wonderful, wise,— 
What can I bring to you here. 
Worthy your eyes? 


—your eyes. 

(Our own far hills in their own fair haze — 
And gray dim storms on the dim green sea; 


31 








The stormy glory of April days, 

And sunlit spaces all fair and free. . . . 

And floating flakes of a golden brown, 

As autumn leaves lie dim, adrift, 

On forest pools where the sunlights drown 
And gray-green shadows sleep and shift.) 


“O God,”—and I stirred in my slumber— 
“Oh, God, that I may not wake!” 

(They moan in the dark without number. 
The legion of hearts that break.) 


The warm west wind is blowing 
Over the bending grass, 

And green and green are flowing 
In waves that foam and pass, 

That form in a jasper smother, 

That pass in an emerald crest, 

That gleam and give way to another, 
That shimmer and sink with the rest. 

The sunlight splashes a splendor 
Of softly blazing gems 
Over the bowing, slender 

Young ranks of the changing stems. 


The morn has come to me with the sunlight 
on the sea, 

The clouds are climbing slow across the 
sky. 

And Death has whispered near—Ah, God, if 
I could hear— 

How beautiful a thing it is to die! 


32 








LAUS VERIS 


HE dusk upon the mountains, and the 
canyons stretching bare; 

The lonely levels rolling to the sun¬ 
set’s golden glare. 

And the blessed smell of wood-smoke upon 
the even air— 


n 


The music of the morning and the soft and 
sudden glow 

That turns to gold and glory on the eager 
earth below, 

The warm and happy ocean and the wavelets 
laughing slow; 

The hum and hush of noonday on the beauty 
of the hills. 

The sea of silent sunlight and the scent of 
earth that fills 

The little lovely hollows that a breathless 
whisper thrills, 

A whisper of the wonder of the green and 
growing things 

Where the golden violets tremble and the 
mossy carpet clings— 

And the brooding warmth above them like 
the hovering of wings. 

Oh, the glory of the Open and the summits 
sweeping free! 

And the Valley’s vastness drooping like a 
flaming tapestry 

From the splendor of the mountains to the 
splendor of the seal 


33 








EMBBgaSB) 

And oh, the purple fragrance of the daylight 
dying slow. 

The mist of mauve and lavender—the vague 
and violet glow— 

The sunset’s faded orange and the darkling 
blue below! 

And lo, the scented shadows and the sun¬ 
light shining thru. 

The darkness and the dawning, and the pain 
that leaps anew. 

The beauty and the wonder—and the agony 
—are you. 

Oh, God! Is there no beauty save the Beauty 
bought with pain? 

And must I pay in anguish for each splash 
of poppy stain 

That lies in yellow lakelets on the greenness 
of the plain? 



34 










THE LOST LEGION 


m 


WORDS that once have marched 
with me, 

O Comrades staunch and true. 

Yet once again, ere it cannot be, 

I come to the wars with you. 


The day was once, O Comrades mine. 

Our trumpets hailed the dawn. 

And rank on rank, in glittering line. 

Your eager swords were drawn, 

A hundred thousand points of light, 

A million swords of sound. 

To hew a path thru the trackless night 
Where the dungeoned dreams were found. 


Doomed to the dark we found them there. 
The dumb iron chains on each. 

And oped their eyes to the sunlit air 
And touched their lips with speech; 

Or, lanced with fire, and girded, helmed. 
And armed with swords of light. 

We bade the orchards bloom—or whelmed 
An empire in her might! 

Oh, once again your Legions roll— 

Once more, and then we part. 

My hands are weak on the banner pole 
And sad and faint my heart. 


No more our dreamland standards frown. 
No more our ranks sweep by, 


36 








Or levelled lines go dashing down 
The spaces of the sky. 

The sword is rust I used to trust 
And moulders in my hand. 

My lips are weak that used to speak 
The sudden, proud command. 

The soul is dazed that once had raised 
The war cry of the Night. 

The Voice is blurred that once ye heard. 

I cannot see aright. 

I lay my wilted gauntlets down. 

And—drops of silent shame— 

I watch the shadows dull and drown 
My sabre’s brazen flame. 

I lay our blemished banners by 
Which we had borne before. 

The sign of Her for whom we die 
When we go forth to war;— 

The sign of Her for whom we laid 
A Realm within a star; 

Or hung with sad celestial jade 
Her still triumphal car. 

Or, wrapt in blood or rapt in dreams. 

We trod the ether ways 

And decked her crown with golden gleams 
Or burning stars ablaze. 

(Be glad my heart has brought from hell 
The flames to burn them clean. 


36 







Their shameful folds must never tell 
The treason of our Queen.) 

But well ye know the Standard’s stain. 

Henceforth your ways are free. 

Ye must not march for Her again. 

Ye cannot march with me. 

The evening thrills the sunward hills. 
And now the dusk is come— 

The muffled beat of your soundless feet; 
The roll of a muted drum. 

Your trumpets fade on the dying day, 
Your watchfires on the dark. 

The dim last ranks are marched away. 
The echoes die. . . But hark . . 

* * * 

Our Queen was false; and yet, some day. 
Beset by falser Lords, 

Perhaps her saddened lips will say 
The summons to our swords. 

Perhaps a hurt will reach her heart, 

A sorrow touch her Land . . 

Perhaps—oh, God—the veils will part 
And we will understand! 

Within the tent the Eagles shine 
The weary years between— 

Oh, bide ye well, O Soldiers mine. 

The Service of the Queen! 


37 







A SUNDAY NIGHT 



NLY I know of the driving rain 

That beats on the blurring glass; 
And gleam, and gleam—again, again, 
The lights that stream and pass. 


Only I know of the smothered roar 
That drums in the dark, outside; 

The restless creak of the tossing floor. 

The slap of the curtain-guide . . 

The rock and the drone of the rushing car. 
The windows blind with rain. 

(The drowned light quivers—afar—afar) 
And I am blind with pain. 


88 








FREEHOLD 

UT these you cannot give . . 

The magic night beneath the moun¬ 
tain stars. 

The little winds that stir 
The dark dim forest loom that bars 
The glittering sky with perfumed mass of 
fir; 

The dusty scent of cedar; the murmuring of 
pine 

Above the lonely breathing of the night; 
The stifled snap of firelight coals that shine 
With friendly flame, and crumble into white. 
And you, my dear, a woman and a child. 
Your little fist acrumple at your breast, 
(While slow and far the starry armies filed 
And rimmed with shifting gleams the dis¬ 
tant crest) 

And you, the blessing of your breath upon 
the air, 

Your face, so human pure, and all divine; 
The sleepy fringes of your friendly hair. 

The little warmness of your hand in mine— 
My heart that beat beside your heart 
(So still—for fear you wake!) . . 



And tho they wrest our lives apart, 
These things they cannot take. 


39 








VER VINDEX 




HERE is no God. Of him I have not 

sought 

For justice on the Thing that he has 
wrought. 


In myriads my avengers wait. They gleam 
Where serried poppies march in golden 
hordes. 

In April leaves their windy banners stream. 
The grass shall be but swaying of their 
swords. 


The silver lances of the stars shall dart 

Their keen unpassioned points across your 
way. 

The sunlit sweep of surf will sear your 
heart 

With white-hot plash of pain amid the spray. 

Each flower that blooms beside your haunt¬ 
ed path. 

Each linnet’s song, each lovely thing shall 
be 

A messenger of mute, unchanging wrath, 

A march of my revengeful heraldry. 


40 









AFTERWARD 



NE little prayer to pray 
I have today. 

One thing to say 
Before the gray 

Has hidden all the gleams away. 


One reason to be glad 

Before this sad 

Cold pain shall make me mad. 


At least my soul is free 
From one great agony 
More dread than this can be. 
One fear that stifled me. 

One secret, speechless dread 
That struck and stabbed and fled 
And left our souls unwed. 

My longing less secure— 

Lest when the years were sped 
And all was done and said 
My restless love lie dead . . 

And yours endure. 


41 






THANKSGIVING 



HEN God be thanked that this shall 
be. 

Whatever this may bring. 

A wounded heart hurts mournfully. 
And shame will always sting, 

But this were kinder far for me 
Than that false other thing. 


So God be thanked, O selfish heart 1 
You will not know the worst. 

For tho you bleed or break apart. 

The while you thrill or thirst 
And feel the old white anguish start, 
You shall not be accurst. 

You shall not know that viler woe. 
Incredible and base. 

You shall not feel fulfillment steal 
Enchantment from embrace. 

You shall not see uncaringly 
The tear-drops on her face. 

So God be thanked if this be true: 

Tho hearts of men are strange, 

Tho blither hearts undo and do. 

And happier passions range. 

The pain that froze and fettered you 
Will never let you change! 


42 







SONG 



LOST a word; I lost a touch. 
I miss her sudden smile. 

I half forget 
In pain, and yet 
I know ’twas such 
A wretched while. 


She was a selfish shadow cast 
By what I dreamed might be. 
No shadow lies 
Before my eyes. 

My love at last 

Will stay with me. 


GHOSTS 



EN say there are ghosts, unsleeping. 
Can rise from the dust and the dew 
And wander the wide world, weeping. 
And now I know it’s true. 


I knew that my heart was breaking. 

My love was dead I knew. 

But the wraith of a love is waking. 
And the ghost of a heart, for you. 


43 












DORIS 


III 


| HE steel-keen starlight melts for the 
moon. 

The dim light drips to the canyon 
floors. 

This is the sunland. This is June. 

This is the silence of sycamores. 


Others have wept. Their tears were light. 

Their laughter was learned for this. 

You bring better than tear-drops bright 
And kinder than laughter is. 


The white fires fade and the dreams are 
dust. 

Desires and visions and laughter end. 
You are otherwise. You I trust. 

You are Doris. You are a friend. 



44 







SOUVENIR 


N empty, half-familiar corridor 
The earth is now; for some iconoclast 
Has wrecked the world and left it 
nothing more 

Than poignant broken relics of a past. 

Things have no longer meaning in them¬ 
selves, 

But eerie shapes, removed from use or 
touch, 

Museum treasures ghostly on their shelves. 

They hurt with memories. The world is 
such. 

Half-worshipping I walk forsaken halls, 

Half-scornful of the pain they bring. Men 
ask 

Why I, with all their anxious phantom host. 

Take not the weird tools from haunted walls 

And scar the sculptured shadows with a 
task. 

But I would rather die and be a ghost. 



45 







THE CANYON 



IE crests of the cottonwoods quiver 
In the cleft of the hot ravine. 
Their bright heart leaves ashiver. 
The cool white trunks between. 


And the air is a warm, wan river 
With riffles of silver-green. 

The hushed, hot hillside hovers, 

A dry, sweet droning of wings; 

But here the kind oak covers 
And here the lithe vine clings 
That laughed with the children lovers 
Since, oh, how many Springs I 

The slow moss masses and mellows 
The prints of your little spade, 

The sun on the clean boughs yellows 

The wounds that your dear hands made— 
But the frail fern nods to her fellows, 

And peers at the path, afraid. 

For the pitiful, rain-drenched embers 
Have whispered and now are dumb. 

And the Aprils and still Septembers 

Have learned from the lone bees’ hum. 

Ah, the heart of the hills remembers 
That you—you will never come. 


46 



























































III. 

HERE BEGINS THE 
THIRD PART 
OF THESE RHYMES 


rov acrrtpa iv rjj dvaroKf} 






Rhymes (i i i ) 


FEBRUARY 


0 


EARTH, my lover, my cold light 
lover, 

Whom I have worshipped with rapt 
surmise. 

What wayward treason has bid uncover 
Your wild bright beauty to alien eyes? 


Your silver veils of the mist are parted. 
Your heartbreak splendors are bold and 
bare, 

A shining lure to your shallow-hearted 
Ephemeral lovers and debonair. 


O earth, my lover, have you forgotten 
That I was loyal ere I had seen 
The young air dazed with the willow cotton 
And white peaks dazzle beyond the green ? 

For I was leal when your lips were sober. 
Your heart-beats slow in the waning years. 
And I kept faith in the gray October, 

At hidden altars, with secret tears. 


O earth, my lover, is their song louder 
Than my poor singing that you denied, 
For whom you laugh thru the windy powder 
Of quick new snow on the mountain side? 

My lips were flushed and my breath beat 
faster 

For each poor token of rock or leaf— 


3 









More poignant pleasure and anguish vaster 
Than earthly joy or mortal grief. 

But who shall say—if our goddess squander 
Arcane delights and miraculous things— 
Which wastrel lover is briefly fonder 
Of this blithe body and these bright wings ? 


4 









HYBRIS 



PRAY that the gods will pardon 
My glorious discontent 
With all of their April garden. 

The gifts that the gods have sent. 


The jewelled disguise is shallow. 

The earth’s is a sadder scheme 
Than their device can hallow, 

Or these bright things redeem. 

But we might find us a magic. 

If you would only try. 

More wise and more true than the tragic 
Old wizardries wrought by the sky. 


And beckon the violets golden 
And tremulous out of the sod, 
Defiant and unbeholden 
To them, or to any god 


5 










FRAGMENTS 



The Demi-Rebels 

CANNOT afford to be free. 

Nor indulge in your lively de¬ 
fiance. 

Your bulwarks have vanished for me, 
Who behold and despise your tacit reliance. 


CD 


& & 

A Chorus 

Steam and steel and screaming wheel. 
Wings on the wind at dawn; 

Wide and bright we ride tonight. 

Sing; and our swords are drawn! 


A warm sky burns—from azure urns 
The summer swells and sways 
In foaming, bright, young chrysolite 
On floods of chrysoprase. 






Stanislaus 

The hills are granite—gold—and grand— 
And mightily the mountains stand— 

But ah, they are such little things—beside 
our Level Land! 


6 











The sea is broad and bright—and vain; 
The sea is treacherous as rain . . 

The sea i3 such a shifting thing—but not 
the Amber Plain! 


“The land-locked stars above the Table in 
the east 

Gleam yet; the Cross swings there, de¬ 
cisively, 

But here, beneath the Cape, the stars have 
ceased. 

And dark seas chant, derisively.” 


Weltanschauung 

One cannot know who only sees 
The gray smoke in his eyes. 

The red strife swirl around his knees. 
And selfish battle cries. 

One cannot know who fights or falls. 

One must be throned afar— 

One better knows from garden walls 
What kind of wars they are! 


7 






MISERERE 




RIEFS may be that the bright to¬ 
morrows 

Will find forgot. 

Sorrows there are that are singing 


sorrows, 

But this is not. 


Pain there is that is mine, and lonely. 
That songs refute. 

This is you, and is sorrow only. 

And this is mute. 


Brave with the beauty that grief can borrow 
My heart endures 

Deep long draughts of its own wild sorrow .. 
But this is yours. 


8 









ILLE TRIUMPHANS 


0 ] 


Y dear . . he shall not come unher¬ 
alded and darkling. 

Be glad no easy symbols say what 
we would say. 

Let me remember, dear, his splendid path¬ 
way, sparkling 

With all the precious pangs I hoarded 
for this day. 


Why, I would rather die than he should 
find me sleeping. 

Forgetful and afraid, scarce knowing when 
he came. 

But, keen and quick and waitful, royal 
vigil keeping, 

Be glad if I who greet him light the 
gates with flame 1 


9 









TRANSLATIONS 


The Faun 



IODORUS never molded 
This wild thing, but only folded 
Him in bright enchantments, keeping 
All his grace in silver sleeping. 


Lest the shining spell be shaken, 
Touch him not—or he will waken! 

—Plato. 


Tycho 

Tho I am God of Little Things, and ye 
must ask 

No mighty miracles of me, nor magic 
splendor. 

Yet men may pray to Tycho ’mid the com¬ 
mon task 

For all the aid that such a little god can 
render. —Addaeus. 


Jt & 

‘A Lovely Maiden Aunt’ 

Aloft, alone, on one far bough, 

A fair, last apple lingers. 

The husbandmen may laugh and lie 
And say they willing passed it by— 
For they would hardly tell you how 
It hung beyond their fingers! 

—Sappho. 


10 













Make you a garland, Dica. Wind it 
Thus, for those lovely curls to wear— 
Of dill-stalks twisted 
By your soft-fisted 

Fingers clenched in their gold, and bind it, 
Dica, around your hair. 

No matter how pious at prayer you are, 

No sober old goddess has yet unbent; 

But they, when they see you how fair you 
are. 

May look on you, love you, laugh, and re¬ 
lent. —Sappho. 


Via Cognita 

One road at least thou canst not miss. 

One pathway needs no mark. 

Ah, thou canst hardly stray from this 
Sure highway to the dark. 

Then boldly go where all have gone. 

Thy feet are sure to find 
That broad same slope, and straight, whereon 
The blind may lead the blind. 

—Leonidas. 


11 





DIXIT MAGISTER 


UT I would not my paltry wounds 
were vaunted so. 

Or Calvary, before these friendly 
faces. 

For ye are men and women; ye must know 
Of pains more dread than these, and 
grimmer places, 

That well-intended horrors hardly show. 

Or urgent, strange, devotional grimaces. 


Do mine insistent faithful celebrate that 
work 

As such a fleshly catalog of slaughter, 
Commemorate a whimper in the murk. 

A crown of thorns, a cup of bitter water? 


Those stale forgotten wounds that marred 
that moment’s clay 

Are faded wrongs beside our graver bur¬ 
dens. 

And there have been more bloody hurts 
than they. 

Endured in quietness, for lesser guerdons. 


Think not of me that I would barter pain 
for pity. 

Such facile woes for juvenile compassion, 
Who bear an elder Cross for this our City, 
As patiently, and in another fashion. 


12 












And these, my friendly people, well I know 
that ye 

For many loves would tear your flesh in 
sunder. 

To such I make no futile, mystic plea, 

O lords of air, and masters of the thun¬ 
der! 

But will ye face the scornful dark with me, 
The emptiness and weariness of wonder? 


13 







THE POET 


ECAUSE I have chosen the magic way 
And ridden the music road; 
Because I have sung at the break 
of day 

And dreamed when the evening glowed; 


01 


Because I am blind to the instant need 
And dumb in the market place; 

Because I am sick when the people bleed. 
And sob for a tortured face; 

Because I am not as the others are 
And builded of brawn and bone. 

But bom of the mist and the morning star 
And nursed in the night, alone; 

Because I have fought to the last frontier, 
And face to the endless dark 
Have visioned the first and the furthest fear. 
The infinite, empty arc— 

The circle of night where a dream is naught 
And men are as less than dreams. 

Till faith and the facts that our fathers 
taught. 

The laws that they loved and the things 
they thought. 

Are frozen and futile themes. 

Till kingdoms of gods are as motes that go. 
Till stars are a drift of chaff. 

With none that may laugh at the witless 
show 

But Chaos, that cannot laugh; 



14 











! 

Because I have flaunted before the night 
The banner of earth and men, 

And faint from the far, defiant fight 
Have won to the world again; 

Because of the dreams and the tears that 
ran. 

The sobs and the singing breath. 

My twofold gift is the scorn of man,— 

And this, my hope, is death. 


15 





LA BREA 



HE hills are older. I have seen 
Still centuries of stone and rime. 
But here no granite veils can screen 
The mere massed majesty of time. 


For this was life, and these were kin, 
And that was foretaste of our tears; 
And they had borne our burdens in 
Unmusical and sombre years. 

And all our wizardries of steam. 

Our haughty tunes and towers are vain, 
Unless some grandeur can redeem 
That profligate and futile pain. 

Our world shall grave their songless strife 
In temples vaster than the sky, 

To be their cenotaph,—or Life 
Is all a blunder and a lie. 


16 










l X v H»- * f. 



CREDO 



CAN be kind 
Altho I know 
The gods are blind 
And planets go 
Untended, lost. 

On chartless gyres 
Of lifeless frost 
And lawless fires. 


I can be kind 
Altho I see 
A stumbling, blind 
Infinity, 

Where stars, unsteered. 
Will stagger, dumb. 
While worlds are cleared 
And systems come. 
And sterile change 
Unceasing roll 
An aimless range 
Without a goal. 

And trace the mad 
Same symbol back. 

The circle’s sad 
Enclosed track. 

One might be kind 
Altho he heard 
That once the blind 
Inchoate stirred 
By accidents 

And careless spate 
Of elements 
Informulate 


17 





l araM^na xgaaiaaiaa Bl 





For change and chance 
To shape and scar 
And death enhance 
To what we are. 

r l can be kind 

Altho I know 
The clanging, blind. 
Eternal snow 
Will swell from out 
The dark at length 
In undevout 

Indifferent strength. 
And each by each 
Our passions fold 
In tranquil reach 
Of level cold. 


18 









THE WATCH 


I HE blind seas break against our home¬ 
less prow . . 

The little folk are sleeping, berth 
I by berth. 

Or move with fretful moans and slum¬ 
brous mirth. 

We restless tread the dreary decks, and bow 


To empty gales, who serve the ancient vow. 
The dark winds shake the shrouds; their 
salty dearth 

Is dried upon our doubtful lips. What 
worth 

Are vigils down the vacant waves we plow? 


The Deep is void before; and what comes 
after 

The cold high glory of the Watch we 
keep ? 

Our eyes are blurred from questioning 
the night; 

Our bitter lips forget the taste of laughter. 

They sleep, then, wisely, smiling in their 
sleep;— 

We have not found a Port, nor any 
light- 


19 








MAGUS 



COULD not see the fairy things 
Altho I fought my way 
With weary heart and wounded wings 
Beyond the realms of day. 


I cannot see the little dreams 
That dance around the fire. 

My soul is sick with vaster themes 
And deadlier desire. 


I cannot see the friendly sprites 
That tumble in the smoke. 

My brain is blind from glaring heights. 
And stunned with lightning stroke. 

Ah, lovely must their visions seem 
Who only sit and play 

With rosy gleam and fairy dream 
And tenderness and Fey! 

I cannot know because my ears 
Are muffled with the moan, 

Because my eyes are blind with tears. 
That other men have known. 

Ah, God—the splendor in your eyes. 

The music on your lips . . 

But I have been where vision dies 
And strangling darkness grips. 

I pray that you may pray for me, 

O curving lips, and kind— 

But not to be as you must be. 

And blind as you are blind. 


20 









For I would know that you are thus: 
Immutable, remote. 

Your heart that could not war with us. 
Nor care wherefore we smote; 

Above the battle where we ride. 

And Day that follows after— 

A surf of song when we have died, 

And drifting dust of laughter. 


21 






MA DONNA 

IMMEDIATE and vast. 

The last 

Great Angel stood within your gar¬ 
den-close. 

A still Annunciation stirred the air. 


□D 


But you were bowed above a rose, 
Untroubled there. 

And singing, with the sunlight on your 
hair. 

You did not care. . . 


The Angel smiled, a grave, great smile. 
And sheathed his silent sword, and left you 
so. 

And you may wonder lightly for a while, 
But you will hardly know. 








> 4’ H-r J «. i •' S.3-4* •* } 


RESPITE 



ND these are the singing days 
Ere the days are dumb. 

And these are the pleasant ways 
Ere the long night come. 


I know of the dreams that cease 
And the hate that stays. 

But this is a little peace 
Before those days. 


And this is a magic time, 

And a music love. 

And a dimness, a drift of rhyme. 
In the stars above. 


For gardens I knew not of 
Where such flowers blow 
Have sent me a fairy love 
Until I—know. 


23 






ff l BhWWHiW-B 


QUID ADORAT DIVINITAS 


k ' l H |HAT do you think when the slow 
1 1 fl light changes, 

^ \ J Smothers in sunset, gold and gray, 
. *"" 1 Purple mists and the seaward ranges— 
What do you say ? 


What is the purpose of all October, 

Night, and the mountains moon-washed 
clean. 

Tarnished silver, and shadow-sober . . . 
What do they mean ? 

Morning to me is your clear eyes shining; 

You are abroad on the sunbright hill. 
What in morning can your divining 
Discover still? 


24 












> V' .V - ** •*-S>.V K* * 


TRESPASS 

ING to them frail music. I shall listen. 
Let them laugh a little space, and 
kiss you. 

I have won another crown, where 
gentler jewels glisten. 

Never waste a thought for me, nor dream 
that I shall miss you. 



Breathless little footsteps in the tingling 
water, 

Sudden magic dewdrops on your feet— 

Ere our ocean’s goddess claim you for her 
daughter. 

Laugh, and dry you quickly—oh, be fleet! 

A flash of flying droplets starts and stipples. 

Mars the mystic flood with little waves and 
warm . . 

It were hardly fair that you should stir 
our ripples— 

You, who never dreamed to face our storm. 


25 






AMBUSCADE 



CD 


COULD not believe that I would be 
so foolish. 

One cannot remember 
Mocking clouds will come again, and 
ghoulish 

Little grasses—in November. 


I had near forgot that quiet 
Silver pennons of the rain would waver 
Thus, or clouds in bright battalions break 
and riot. 

Swept with sunset’s battle-flame, and clear 
wind-trumpets quaver. 


I would not have wished to be so silly. 

I remembered not that earth would be like 
yonder 

Glowing thing; or dawning like a tiger- 
lily,— 

Orange-gold and purple-black—and fragile 
tints that day will squander. 

I would hardly ask to be forgiven. 

I am not repentent. I am only 

Pleased with this my pain, and sorry I 
have striven. 

Numbed my heart lest this should be . . I 
was lonely. 


26 













Ml 


You are just a woman-child—yes, you are 
pretty 

Let me say my secret then—for you are 
clever; 

Lest it end in bitterness, my laughter for 
your pity, 

Hush, and let me tell you. This is not 
forever. 


27 





BRONZE AND BLUE 
B e a t a 


CD 


COULD not know that this would be 
A loveliness. 

How should my heart have known 
that she 
Could gently bless 
That ancient, lyric hurt for me— 

How could I guess? 


Weave for them frail music from your 
morning. 

Quaint little mischief words adorning 
Web of woman-thoughts; the warp of girl¬ 
ish wonder. 

And weft of faith and Faerie, under. . . 


(I would not really wander 
Amid your marvels yonder. 

I am not truly fonder 

Of you than of—my soul.) 

& 

For this, for this the roses grew, 

Lilies and violets, gold and blue. 

While quiet Aprils have gleamed and passed— 
For careless fingers to rend at last? 



28 










For this, for this the angels bent. 

Happy and anxious and proud, and lent 
Their golden glories to light her hair. 

And Mary’s magic to make her fair? 

For this the spirits that throng the night 
And fairies that dance in the drowsy light. 
And goddesses glad in the salt sea spray. 
Their blitheness and beauty have cast away) 

But I were . . . lonely 
Forever, rather 
Than find this only 
A flower to gather. 


Your God bespoke you, dreaming. 
And stirred your hair, and said 
What sent the sunlight streaming 
And where our dreams are fled— 
He left the morning gleaming 
In gold around your head. 

& 


Hit Gifu H* tealeth with Hit light. 

That men acknowledge them: 

Your fair browt crowned and bronxey-bright, 
A spun-gold anadem. 


29 





PRIVILEGE 


OMETIMES, when I have seen you, 
swaying so, 

A friendly miracle, with waiting 
eyes, 

Your young soul poised to meet some 
bright surprise 

With solemn song, it has been good to know 


a 


It is my right to find you where the slow 
Green mist has veiled the sycamores, in 
skies 

Where silver-laughing meadow larks arise. 
And your brave heart on that dark way I 
go. 


For I, if I have—loved you—singing so. 
Your patient royalty, your songlit cheeks. 
Have set me this tremendous task for 
them. 

Forgive me, or ignore me. You must know 
Too far on tragic enterprise one seeks 
To earn—such things—to ever ask 
for them. 


30 










HAUTEUR 


\H 


AM too proud to still pretend 
That this will be, and briefly end. 


I am too proud to ever sing 
Of this as light or little thing. 


And far too proud to feebly hide 
The shining shame that is my pride! 


You are too groat to only do 

The pretty things your whole life thru, 

. . The magic that is you. 

This is too great a thing to die 
Between a girl’s dissent, a woman’s sigh, 
To sanely live and gravely die— 

The Vision that is you, and I. 


31 







ROUTE 1100 

The Ventura Highway 


HE level early bright warm light 
Would waver down the hills, and rills 
Of velvet shadows throng along 
The dusky pools of oak, and cloak 
The grassy younger green between;— 
An ancient gloom aloft, and soft 
New fragile flames aglow below; 



And, miles and miles, an anxious breeze 
Would stir the cloudy walnut trees. 


The orchard aisles would lift and shift. 
And plum-tree blossoms fall, down all 
Those silent ranks of white young light; 
The sudden furrows range and change. 
And baby blades of com adorn 
The cool quick fields of brown, or crown 
Their slopes with spire and spire of fire. 

It might be thus, for you, I knew— 

But if it still would be, for me, 

I really never cared to see. 


32 











CREATRIX 


S3 


HAT magic lives in these your songs, 
what wonder 

In careless little rhymes you meant 
for careless ears. 

That, aeons after you are hidden safely 
under 

The homely grass, a quaint compound of 
dust and tears. 

Because I loved their music I should let 
them thunder 

In long storms down the distant head¬ 
lands of the years ? 


Your words shall move amid that infinite 
contriving. 

Upon those formless waters, and your 
breath blown thru; 

And when the heavy hurricane is starkly 
riving 

The cloudy, sterile shores to shape their 
sands anew, 

A little silver rain, a thin mist driving 

Amid the solemn onslaught will be you. 


33 









COMMENCEMENT 



NLY pain is lovely. 

This I know. 

In sorrow, and half gladly 
I must go. 


These shining dawns shall greet you, 
other years. 

Until one dusk shall tremble 
thru your tears. 


What Dream shall you leave homeless 
on these hills 

When these slow trumpets call you, 
this hurt thrills ? 


But I am braver, knowing 
that shall be 
An echo and, almost, 
a memory. 


34 



















INDEX TO FIRST LINES 
Part One 


A cry from the dark; yo....My'17.24 

A gray iron race from th....Ap '18.34 

All that I had I have giv....Ap '18.54 

Behind their backs the b....My '19.29 

Behold, thou art fair, m....My '19. 55 

Dumb, silent songs my b....Ag '17.52 

Eyes to the front and he....De '18.26 

Friend that I hailed on t....Ag '17.49 

Gave I the Gods my nake....Ag '17.51 

Greasy smoke and gray, ....My '17.32 

Here, ere the far dawn br....Jl'17.17 

I know it for what it is: ....Je'17.51 

In the cruel, sane day .J1 '17.45 

I sent my soul to wander....Se '17.43 

Is it dusk that has come ....Ag '19....27 

I sought not the scent of ....Je '17..48 

O Goddess and Mother, A....De '20.58 

O beauteous, blind Ast....Ap '19.59 

A woman, a wonder, As....De '20.60 

O little Temple Keeper.Je'17.44 

Only a girl, my God.De '17.56 

O Thou who art strong....De '21.57 

O thou who once wast ru....Ap '19.35 

Red lips and curls and br....Je'17.51 

































Ringed by the wolves of „..Oc’16.33 

Softly the clay they fold.J1 '17.62 

Sometimes, amid the pain....Se'17.50 

Spring: green myst’ries ....My'17.63 

Sunlight, and the shadow....Mr '17.23 

Swelling circlet of emeral....Mr '19.22 

The death of the d....Winter'17-8.25 

The gray land dipped be....My '19.20 

To them of deeper vision ....Jl ’17.23 

What pangs the cold sea....My '19.42 

What talk ye of traitors ....De '17.28 

When God was dead behi....Ap'17.41 

With all the world a mad....Je '17.46 

Ye who never knew the w....Ag'17.31 

Your song in the golden ....Mr '17.61 























i w .% v».,-g- y * j> y :•).y C 


INDEX TO FIRST LINES 
Part Two 


A million years the morn....Oc '21.12 

And you have suffered, Ch....Jl '22....18 

An empty, half-familiar c....Ag ’22.45 

A Shrine stood far in a ....My ’21.31 

But these you cannot giv....Mr’21.T9 

Derrick shadows loom aga....Jl ’22.9 

I die tomorrow, .Ag’22.5 

If wretchedness and pover....Jl ’22.22 

I know that beauty only i....Jl’22_ ...14 

I lost a word; I lost a tou....Jl’22.43 

Men say there are ghosts....Ag '22.43 

Night, and the brief la....Se 8 ’22.6 

“O God,” and I stirred in....Ap ’21.32 

O Kings of the earth, the....Se'21.23 

One little prayer to pray....Ap'22.41 

Only I know of the dr....Mr 11 ’21.38 

O thou who wast given o.„.Se ’21.31 

Our own far hills in thei....Se’19.31 

And floating flakes of....Fall '21.32 

O Words that once have.... Ja ’21.35 

I lay my wilted gauntl....Se ’21.36 

Perhaps when youth is b....Oc'21.29 

Sliding aslant of the bla....My '22.3 

The crests of the cotto....Je 20 ’22.46 





























The dawn is on the hills ;....Ap '20.7 

The dusk upon the moun....Fb *21.33 

The morn has come to m....My ’21.32 

Then God be thanked that....Je ’22.42 

There is music that lies ....Je’21.31 

There is no God. Of hi....My’21.40 

The sadness of summer sl....Je '22.13 

The steel-keen starlight....Je 2 ’22.44 

The warm west wind is ....Mr’21.32 

They did you wrong, a bi....Jl ’22.19 

They say God loves, and ....Ap ’22.30 

Tho music is mute to me.Je’22.10 

What can I give to you, ....Fb '19.31 

What lies, I wonder, deep....No’21.11 

Who are the Strong? .Je’22.25 

You moan your rage. W....J1 ’22.16 
























INDEX TO FIRST LINES 
Part Three 


Aloft, alone, on one far....Mr’23.10 

And these are the sing....No 1’22.23 

A warm sky burns—from....Oc ’22.6 

Because I have chosen t....No’21.14 

But I would not my pa....Fe 7 ’23.12 

Diodorus never molded.Fe’23.10 

For this, for this the ros....Ja’23.28 

Griefs may be that t....No 15’22.8 

His gifts He sealeth wit....Oc’22.29 

I am too proud to stil pr....Mr’23.31 

I can be kind .Se’22.17 

I cannot afford to be fre....Oc’22.6 

I could not believe tha....Ja 27 ’23.26 

I could not know that....Je 17’23.28 

I could not see the fa....Se 30’22 . 20 

Immediate and vast,.No 11 ’22.22 

I pray that the gods ....Ap 12 ’23.5 

I would not really wande....Ja’23.28 

Make you a garland. Die....Mr’23.11 

My dear . . he shall n....Fe 21 ’23..9 

O Earth, my lover, my....Fe 2 ’23.3 

One cannot know who on....Oc’22.7 

One read at least thou c....Mr ’23.11 

Only pain is lovely.Je 9 ’23.34 


































Sing to them frail mu....Ja 24’23 . 25 

Sometimes, when I have....Mr ’23.30 

Steam and steel and scr....Fe’23.6 

The blind seas break a....Ap 13’23 .19 

The hills are granite—go....No’22.6 

The hills are older. I h....Je 6'23 ...16 

The land-locked stars ab... Mr’23 .7 

The level early bright w....Mr’23.32 

Tho I am God of Little ....Fe’23.10 

Weave for them frail ....Ja 24’23 . 28 

What do you think w....Oc 11’22 . 24 

What magic lives in ....My 20’23 . 33 

Your God bespoke you. Oc'22.29 







































































• * 



















































































































































